The RNC's New Anti-Obama Ad: 'Balance'.

The Republican National Committee is flush with cash, but it isn’t allowed to coordinate with John McCain’s campaign. Still, the RNC’s new expenditure arm is trying to help out their boy with a bunch of ads in four heavily contested states: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to hit Obama on energy policy.

But anyway, let’s get to the debunking, shall we?

“John McCain says solve it now with a balance plan: alternative energy…” By alternative energy, the ad means ethanol, which is made from grain and so plays very well with voters in farm states. But biofuels like ethanol are increasingly unpopular among environmentalists and economists, who have concluded that they actually do more harm than good. An environmentalist named George Monbiot said in The Guardian that biofuels are actually worse than the energy sources they’re supposed to be replacing, and the World Bank recently found that biofuels like ethanol have caused global food prices to spike by 75 percent. McCain knows this and has said the same thing, but changed his stance this year before a certain important caucus held in a farm state.

“…conservation…” Part of what makes this such an interesting gambit for the RNC is that McCain has an absymal record on the environment; the only way this works is if you’re not paying attention. The League of Conservation Voters gave him a zero for his legislative record last year.

“….suspending the gas tax and more production here at home.” Oy. Where to start? The idea behind the ‘gas tax holiday,’ is that by eliminating the tax on gasoline for a short period of time, drivers would be able to save a grip of money. But there isn’t an economist anywhere of any political persuasion who buys that.

“Score one for Obama,” wrote Greg Mankiw, a former chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. “In light of the side effects associated with driving … gasoline taxes should be higher than they are, not lower.” …

Economists said that since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers.

“You are just going to push up the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut,” said Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.

The same goes for the drilling. Like with ethanol, McCain has long opposed offshore drilling because it wouldn’t work, but switched on it in a weird pander. There are very few economists riding for this — even the conservative ones think it’s a longshot — and a government report says drilling off the coast “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030.”

The Republican Party is finding itself on the wrong side of this issue, and instead of coming up with a viable alternative, is resorting to sleights of hands and disingenuousness.